‘Dancing in September'

If not dancing in the night, certainly autumnal fun-exercise, in a water meadow beside the Thames this morning.

Never was a cloudy day, as they say, as Green Gym gathered for our part in the annual raking-after-the-meadow-cut:

Our work-party was all part of the scenery for people passing by on the Thames.  The boat in the background of the pic: one of the c 25,000 licensed craft on the non-tidal part of the Thames.  Trains rushing by over the nearby bridge served as an intermittent reminder that it was the advent of the ‘iron horse’ which transformed the Thames into a river for recreational use/organized chaos.  – For me personally the scene reminded me of the pleasant surprise I had recently had on holiday, coming across the original of Boulter’s Lock, Sunday Afternoon (Edward John Gregory, 1897) in the Lady Lever art gallery.  I recall, from Asst-Lock-Keeper training, that the scene had been reconstructed for the centenary of the picture.  Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate a photographic record of that occasion.

To return to Green-Gym matters, the task was the very serious one of removing the cut material from what is now flourishing as a wildflower meadow (8 new species of flowers identified in the most recent survey).  So, where site-staff had gone ahead with the Stihl machinery, volunteers laboured, with rake and pitchfork, to create vast piles of cuttings, which had to be trampled down for more loads to be deposited:

“While the volunteers did all the hard work, C was just having fun on the trampoline”

That it was hard work for those at ground level, was evidenced by this exchange, some time after 11 o'clock:

Hopeful volunteer #1: “It must be nearly time for coffee-break?  Soon?”

C: “Its’ very nearly time to start thinking about it.”

Tea-wallah: “Ah, so another forty-five minutes then.”

Hopeful volunteer #2: “Was that ‘45 minutes’ or ‘4-5 minutes’?”

Tea-wallah: “Okay, we’ll make it 4-5 minutes!”

This was the view from on top of the first compost-heap:

And this the view from the base of the next pile to be built up and compacted:

(Note the train in the background.)

Inevitably some flowers had escaped/been spared the blades of the cutter:

They acted as reminders why we were going to such lengths to preserve the habitat, in order that more flowers can bloom next year.